I have a gun in my truck…

The problem with creating laws like this would be this: How would you enforce such laws? Would you randomly go to houses looking for improperly stored guns? Oops, Fourth Amendment—can’t do that!

No, but showing proof of purchase of a suitable cabinet/storage box/whichever would get around this just nicely.

Bryan says:You know, increased regulation and control is not the issue. As weatherc said, the only way to administer those controls is through intrusive means.

How does a background check on your criminal record qualify as intrusive? How does investigating a gun show to ensure there aren’t any illegally imported weapons qualify as intrusive?

Wiggling vaguely off the topic:

Ricky says-

The idea of institutionalizing “the teaching of ethics and morals and responsibility” is the most revolting idea I’ve ever heard from a politician.

They teach ethics to schoolchildren in Germany, I believe.

Ethics and morals are something a decent parent can do for themselves… but educating kids about some responsibilities is an interesting thing. My high school had optional classes on things like keeping yourself safe from muggers, and your rights and responsibilities as a tenant of a rented home, and stuff. It was pretty useful.

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Telling children about how to properly use a gun and about morals and ethics won’t make a huge difference - a lot of school kids are simply too immature to understand. Think about it, Little Johnny is told in school that when he gets mad at another student or at his teacher he should NEVER go and get his dad’s gun and blow the offending student/teacher away? Think about how rediculous the suggestion is. If you have a gun problem so serious that you have to start telling kids at an early age that they shouldn’t shoot each other down in the streets, I think your problm goes way beyond something that’s solved by having some teachers talk about it.

Education isn’t the solution, it just won’t work. If you don’t want kids to shoot each other then get rid of the guns. Plain and simple. It’s really not so hard to understand that more guns means more gun related activity, is it?

Look at countries that have strict gun laws and then look at their gun related crime. It’s easy to see: less guns = less shootings.

As for the whole “I need to carry my gun to take down the government if I need to” thing. If you have such little faith in your government, perhaps you should move - or vote. I always thought the American Revolution was about ‘no taxation without representation’, not ‘my fairly elected representative has become a despot’. If you have such little faith that democracy can produce a responsible government that you feel the need to arm yourself then maybe you need more help than a Colt .45.

And finally, if you still feel the urge to own a gun ‘just in case’ because ‘you never know’. Ask yourself, on the odd chance that your gun is ever fired, is it more probable that it will be fired at an oppressive government or mistakenly fired at your kids, innocent passerby, a shopkeeper or a teacher? That’s IF it’s ever fired.

I own a gun, in fact I own about half a dozen. One is a Civil War-era Henry rifle that is a family heirloom. (I’m the oldest son of the oldest son of the ...) The rest are for hunting, except for a handgun which I used back in the day when I played music in rough bars. (Ah, youth.)

Funny how attitudes change. It is now quite fashionable to bash assault rifles, but back in 1776, every rifle was an assault rifle. Scoff if you want, but have you ever seen a Kentucky long rifle? Have you ever fired one? I did once; I never know that it was possible for shoulderblades to clap. (I think you can still see the weave of the shirt in my shoulder.) In fact, one of the reasons that the British had such trouble in America during our revolution and the War of 1812 was that every American they met would be an above-average shooter in the British army. Wellington said as much after Andrew Jackson’s troops stopped the British outside of New Orleans.

Even when I was a kid (born in ‘67), it was nothing for us to walk through town (a small town in the Midwest, FWIW) with guns on the way to hunt rabbit and squirrel. Now, we had the safeties on and no rounds in the gun as we walked, and we still treated the gun as if it were loaded. Still, if a couple 12-year-olds did that today, they’d be taken away by Child Services, the parents would be arrested, it would be splashed over the evening news for a week, and we’d have to suffer Katie Couric whinging about it. Tragic, that.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe in having guns around kids. In fact, my brother and I are making sure that his kids are afraid of guns; that way they won’t even touch them until my brother decides they are ready. Then again, that’s behaving responsibly, which seems to really bother some people.

One thing I have to say, though, is that I find it hilarious how some people view me. I knew one guy, a PETA member, who shrilled at me “You’ve killed hundreds of innocent deer!” He got so mad when I took it as a compliment; I’m lucky to get one deer a decade.

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Education isn’t the solution, it just won’t work. If you don’t want kids to shoot each other then get rid of the guns. Plain and simple. It’s really not so hard to understand that more guns means more gun related activity, is it?

Look at countries that have strict gun laws and then look at their gun related crime. It’s easy to see: less guns = less shootings.

Gee, then I suppose Switzerland (where citizens are REQUIRED to own a working rifle) has the highest gun crime rate in the whole world… Oh, wait. It doesn’t.

And I also suppose that gun crime rates are lowest in areas of the U.S. that have the most restrictive gun laws, like Washington D.C. ... Oh wait, they aren’t.

See, the problem isn’t the guns. Even a generation or two ago, it was fairly common for parents to give their kids their own guns when they reached a certain age, yet the kids didn’t usually shoot each other. So what’s changed—the guns, or the people using them?

For the record, I don’t trust the U.S. goverment any further than I could spit a pistol, and yes, I do vote, thank you very much. But power has a tendency to corrupt. Just look at the relationship between Congress and lobbyists. And the reason that it is important to have an armed populace “just in case,” is because if it WEREN’T armed, just imagine what the government could get away with. I love the way we all think “It could never happen here—this is America!” I bet the Germans never thought it could happen there, either, before WWII.

And just how are you proposing to “get rid of the guns”? Just show up at people’s houses and say “We know you own firearms. Now give them up”? No, that’s not tyranny. That’s not despotism. Not at all. Oh, I know. We could just start passing laws that limit what kind of guns we can buy, one by one, until all we can own is a gun that holds one bullet, or maybe even pellet guns. No, that’s not tyranny. That’s not despotism. Not at all. It’s all for “common sense gun control” and “reason” and “for the protection of the children.”

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What I find interesting is that whenever people who get defensive about gun control start spouting off facts and figures they always tend to refer to rifles.

Rifles are fine for the most part. I’ve got no problem with people keeping a few rifles in their home for the purpose of hunting, shooting, whatever. Rifles are hard to conceal. It’d be hard for a kid to sneak his dad’s .22 or .303 into school to take out his class. Not that it doesn’t happen, but the odds are a whole lot smaller. Rifles I can understand, I don’t want one myself but if someone else does I’ve got no real complaint. If parents want to hand their large collection of rifles down to their kids, fine.

As for Switzerland - please. Every citizen in Switzerland is required to own a working rifle. They are also required to do military service so they can learn how to shoot it (and carry it and what’s safe etc etc). They also have strict laws about how it is to be stored. I would expect them to have low gun crime rates, they have good regulation.

As for the Washington DC thing, how hard is it to get a gun into DC - not. Drive across the state line.

I’ll qualify the rest of my remarks to exclude most rifles.

I certainly don’t think it’d be feasable to go to people’s homes and ‘take their guns’. There are lots of good ways to get people to give their guns up voluntarily, Raena was very thorough on that topic. If you don’t want to get rid of the guns you have, fine - license them. Aside from that, stop manufacturing/importing the bloody things. If you make guns impossible to get a hold of then you end up with fewer people with guns. Easy. Some will always slip through, sure. But at least Little Johnny can’t go down to Hal’s Gun’s ‘n’ Stuff and pick himself up a Glock.

If you look back on some of my earlier posts, I had suggested that it would be reasonable to require gun safety and handling training as part of obtaining a general gun license. A thorough background check would also be a part of the process of obtaining a license.

I would also like to add that I support very harsh sentences for crimes committed with guns (this excludes self defense, which isn’t a crime, of course).

I love the line “If you make guns impossible to get a hold of…” That’s funny. Wouldn’t that be the same as infringing on the right of the people to keep and bear arms? That’s what it sounds like to me. It would also be impossible. The last time I checked, drugs like cocaine are illegal throughout all of the U.S. and Canada, and yet, they are available everywhere, even though we spend BILLIONS on drug enforcement. Guns wouldn’t be any harder to get into the U.S. than drugs.

If you don’t like guns, fine. Don’t buy any. But don’t just run roughshod over our Constitutional rights because you don’t agree with it.

I own a gun, in fact I own about half a dozen. One is a Civil War-era Henry rifle that is a family heirloom. (I’m the oldest son of the oldest son of the ...) The rest are for hunting, except for a handgun which I used back in the day when I played music in rough bars. (Ah, youth.)

Funny how attitudes change. It is now quite fashionable to bash assault rifles, but back in 1776, every rifle was an assault rifle. Scoff if you want, but have you ever seen a Kentucky long rifle? Have you ever fired one? I did once; I never know that it was possible for shoulderblades to clap. (I think you can still see the weave of the shirt in my shoulder.) In fact, one of the reasons that the British had such trouble in America during our revolution and the War of 1812 was that every American they met would be an above-average shooter in the British army. Wellington said as much after Andrew Jackson’s troops stopped the British outside of New Orleans.

Even when I was a kid (born in ‘67), it was nothing for us to walk through town (a small town in the Midwest, FWIW) with guns on the way to hunt rabbit and squirrel. Now, we had the safeties on and no rounds in the gun as we walked, and we still treated the gun as if it were loaded. Still, if a couple 12-year-olds did that today, they’d be taken away by Child Services, the parents would be arrested, it would be splashed over the evening news for a week, and we’d have to suffer Katie Couric whinging about it. Tragic, that.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe in having guns around kids. In fact, my brother and I are making sure that his kids are afraid of guns; that way they won’t even touch them until my brother decides they are ready. Then again, that’s behaving responsibly, which seems to really bother some people.

One thing I have to say, though, is that I find it hilarious how some people view me. I knew one guy, a PETA member, who shrilled at me “You’ve killed hundreds of innocent deer!” He got so mad when I took it as a compliment; I’m lucky to get one deer a decade.

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I am aware of your position on licensing and training when it comes to owning firearms. I think that’s great.

I will however address your question about “run[ing] roughshod over our Constitutional rights”.

There’s nothing wrong with changing the constitution. It’s been done before. Amendment 18 was passed, then repealed in Amendment 21. Indeed, the Constitution should be flexible so that it can be brought up to date with the times. I am merely suggesting that the ‘right to bear arms’ might not be appropriate anymore (in its current incarnation), though I’m sure it was when it was proposed.

One of the great things about the American Constitution is that it has an amending formula built in. This implies that it should be used from time to time. There are costs and benefits to every decision. For me, I consider the cost of gun controls to far outweigh the potential benefit of fewer gun related crimes. Your mileage may vary.

Let me put it this way, I live in The Netherlands where there are pretty tight gun control laws. And I’m in favour of them. I don’t need a gun, have NEVER seen one, have never used one.
I was on vacation once in the States for three months, with normal ppl, who didn’t go around carrying guns either.
I have the opinion about the 2nd amendament that it was written over 200 years ago, when society was totally different. If someone would write a new constitution from scratch these days, it would be different. I can’t forbid you Yanks to go around carrying guns, but if you look at the number of incidents involving guns or rifles everyday, you ppl should scratch your heads and start thinking how things COULD be different in this new century.
Just my 0.045 Euro, and in no way a lecture, don’t get me wrong.